He spent his life managing the family's country estate, Stonewall, in Kent.
He conducted fieldwork and collected birds in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, the Canary Islands and Spain, the presumably-extinct Canary Islands oystercatcher Haematopus meadewaldoi being foremost among them.
Meade-Waldo's discovery of sandgrouse chick rearing behaviour in 1896 was for a long time discredited as fantasy.
[1] He accompanied James Lindsay, 26th Earl of Crawford and the naturalist Michael John Nicoll on their third voyage on the RYS Valhalla; on 7 December 1905 at about 10:15 am the yacht, was cruising off the Florida coast when a "large fin, or frill, sticking out of the water," was spotted.
This sea serpent incident became famous and caused much interest back home in Britain.